About Me

I'm just me - a solitary wanderer who trekked across much of the world and recently retired to a small farm in the Ozarks.
My checkered past includes time spent as an Army officer, high school teacher and principal, real estate broker, child protection worker and administrator, and social worker with the U.S. military.
Over the years I have resided in a variety of places including Missouri, Virginia, Okinawa, Kansas, Kentucky, and Arizona. I have also traveled to Germany, Mexico, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Great Britain, Belize, Guatemala, Taiwan, Guam, South Korea, Vietnam, and numerous islands in the Caribbean - including Cuba.
I have ridden in a Russian ambulance, hitch-hiked across Moscow late at night, fought an ostrich, celebrated New Year's at a street party in Hanoi, and bicycled across the Caribbean. My travels have taken me to Ground Zero in Hiroshima, the Bolshoi Ballet, China Beach, and the White House kitchen.
The nine things in life that I am most proud of are my children: Nick, Molly, and Tim, and my grandchildren: Boone, Sebastian, Judah, Olive, Willow, and Sullivan.
Life has been very good to me indeed!

Friday, July 7, 2017

Masters of Understatement

by Pa RockCitizen Journalist

Last week Donald Trump went on yet another Twitter rampage, one in which he viciously and sadistically attacked a pair of American television journalists, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the co-hosts of the MSNBC news program, Morning Joe. In addition to their proven abilities as competent journalists, Scarborough is a former Republican congressman from Florida and Brzezinski is the daughter of Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State, the late Zbigniew Brzezinski - one Republican and one likely Democrat, a nice balance.

But it is hard for anything to stay balanced when operating in the orbit of Donald Trump. The supposed billionaire from Manhattan has outspoken issues with CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The New York Post, The Washington Post, and most other national and international news organizations - with the possible exception of Fox News. Any time a story airs or is published that Trump doesn't like, he yells "Fake news!" and begins tweeting insults at the journalists who dared to confront or expose him.

Donald Trump grew up in a protected shell of privilege from which he was safely able to bully and heap scorn on anyone, and he maintains that arrogant sense of self-entitlement to this day as he goes about life a snarling and bitter old man yelling down at the world from his golden penthouse high atop his delusion of grandeur.

When Trump attacks it is seldom with facts. His usual modus operandi is to hurl insults in the manner of a schoolyard bully. That was in evidence in last week's tweets when her referred to Scarborough as "Psycho Joe" and tagged Brzezinski as "low I.Q. Crazy Mika."

But it didn't end there. Donald Trump has a long history of attacking women with insults (and has bragged about attacking women physically), and he seems to have an obsession with the notion of women and blood. Last year he describedthen Fox journalist Megyn Kelly as having "blood coming out of her eyes and blood coming out of her wherever" because she had asked him pointed questions during a debate. And in last week's tweet about Brzezinski he said that she had shown up at his private club in Florida with her face bleeding as the result of a bad face-lift. The remarks about Kelly were obviously just crude hyperbole, but Brzezinksi and Scarobrough both denied the story of her bloody face and said she has never had a face-lift. They said Trump was lying.

Scarborough and Brzezinski, in fact, issued a lengthy reply to Trump's tweets, categorically refuting and dismissing all of his claims as false. The title of their rebuttal was "Donald Trump Is Not Well," leading some to surmise that the two journalists are perhaps masters of understatement.

About the same time, singer and actress Bette Midler posted a tweet showing Donald Trump clad in tight white shorts playing tennis - and displaying a rump the size of a pair of prize smoked hams, a view the Divine Miss M characterized as "lard-ass."

Perhaps Bette is also a master of understatement.

Donald Trump has defined his life by ridiculing and tormenting others, and he continues to do so. Now that he has finally succeeded in getting to the very pinnacle of power and attention in America, Trump is going to have to toughen up because not everyone will sit by quietly and let him yell at the little people of the world unchallenged.

Trump is likely to find that his bully pulpit is facing into an echo chamber, a place where all of his disdain and derision of others will intensify and come roaring back at him. Buckle up, Donnie, it's going to be a bumpy ride - and one that you brought on yourself.

1 comment:

Don
said...

Until Trump's base deserts him (and I see little chance of that any time soon) he'll have license to do and say pretty much whatever he wants, no matter how revolting his subject matter may turn out to be. In the meantime, our country will have to somehow absorb the political travesty that is our 45th president.